Recognizing Communicative Intentions in Infancy

I make three related proposals concerning the development of receptive communication in human infants. First, I propose that the presence of communicative intentions can be recognized in others’ behaviour before the content of these intentions is accessed or inferred. Second, I claim that such recognition can be achieved by decoding specialized ostensive signals. Third, I argue on empirical bases that, by decoding ostensive signals, human infants are capable of recognizing communicative intentions addressed to them. Thus, learning about actual modes of communication benefits from, and is guided by, infants’ preparedness to detect infant-directed ostensive communication. 1. Ostensive Signals According to the Gricean analysis of meaning (1989), a communicative act intends to fulfil two (or perhaps three) intentions simultaneously. By producing the act, the communicator intends (1) to generate a certain response in the audience, (2) to let the audience recognize the intention specified in (1), and (3) to make the audience fulfil the first intention on the basis of fulfilling the second one. This analysis proposes that, unlike instrumental actions, which can normally be explained by a single intention specifying the desired outcome of the action, communicative acts are generated by (at least) two intentions, one of them being a second-order intention referring to the other one. In everyday terms, Grice’s insight here is that a communicator wants not only to convey a message but also that the addressee recognize his intention to do so, and would not be satisfied with the outcome of his action unless this recognition is realized. Sperber and Wilson (1995) reformulated the same insight in different terms. Although their interpretation of how human communication works differs markedly from that of Grice, they retained the idea of the presence of a dual intention in all communicative acts. In their terms, the communicator’s informative intention is to achieve a certain effect in the addressee by modifying her cognitive environment, while his communicative intention is to make his informative intention manifest for the addressee (or mutually manifest between the communicator and the addressee). Thus, ostensive communication can be achieved when the communicator manages to fulfil his informative intention by getting the addressee to recognize I thank Hanoch Ben-Yami, György Gergely, Ágnes Kovács, Eugenio Parise, and Ernő Téglás for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Address for correspondence: Central European University, Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 1015 Budapest, Hungary. Email: [email protected] Mind & Language, Vol. 25, No. 2 April 2010, pp. 141–168.  2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd